JEAN The still loneliness of desertion held fast the clutter of sheds and old stables roofed with dirt and rotting hay.

The melancholy of emptiness hung like an invisible curtain before the sprawling house with warped, weather-blackened shingles, and sagging window-frames.
You felt the silence when first you sighted the ranch buildings from the broad mouth of the Lazy A coulee,--the broad mouth that yawned always at the narrow valley and the undulations of the open range, and the purple line of mountains beyond.

You felt it more strongly when you rode up to the gate of barbed-wire, spliced here and there, and having an unexpected stubbornness to harry the patience of men who would pass through it in haste.

You grew unaccountably depressed if you rode on past the stables and corrals to the house, where the door was closed but never locked, and opened with a squeal of rusty hinges, if you turned the brown earthenware knob and at the same instant pressed sharply with your knee against the paintless panel.
You might notice the brown spot on the kitchen door where a man had died; you might notice the brown spot, but unless you had been told the grim story of the Lazy A, you would never guess the spot was a bloodstain.

Even though you guessed and shuddered, you would forget it presently in the amazement with which you opened the door beyond and looked in upon a room where the chill atmosphere of the whole place could find no lodgment.
This was Jean's room, held sacred to her own needs and uses, in defiance of the dreariness that compassed it close.